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| Scene Title | Post-Script |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | For Brian and Cat, if something happens. |
| Date | March 10, 2009 |
Somewhere In Chinatown — Connor and Teo's Apartment
Over his shoulder, Salvatore asleep is a distinct shape, from the question-mark curl of his legs to the nook of his supine hip, despite the distortion of rumpled comforter and the desk lamp burning a staticky black neon hole into the corner of Teo's vision. He's getting tired: the kind of tired you get from sitting a long while. Writing, or trying to. His hand hasn't started cramping up yet; it turns out that six months of diligently evading cops and terrorists and punching little girls with the furniture doesn't lead to proportional atrophy of the pen-steering muscles.
There's a dirty joke in here somewhere. He isn't telling it very well.
After a moment, he realizes that there is an untidy blot of black forming underneath his pen nib where he had stopped mid-paragraph, mid-sentence, mid-word, forgot to lift it off the page for too long. Belatedly, he does so, squints down at the dense row of neat cursive letterforms.
—briel Gray may work with us because he has
Jesus. He puts his face in his hand. His nose is too big to fit into the hollow of his palm easily, but by now, thanks to both the erstwhile serial killer's arcane methods and Teo's own motley troupe of friends, that has healed enough that the pressure and bending of cartlidge just clears his sinuses. After a moment, he reaches over to grab his glass of water. It turns out that his glass has no more water in it, except for one last drop — more of an eddy really, the gravitational accumulation of residue, refracting light that comes through its fat belly in a second layer of distortion through the flat, round lens of the cup's clear base. It occurs to him, fleetingly, wryly, Not even half full. It requires effort to remember, and then he keeps writing.
nothing to lose. It is best if he has recovered from his amnesia by then, in the interest of self-control — one of his abilities was driving him to kill. Do not let him think he owes me anything. He is more likely to help if Gillian asks him to.
These are just notes. There's no grocery list of abilities afterward, no elaboration as to the otherwise blatantly obvious nature of the relationship between the man who has every power and the girl who has none of her own. This isn't the kind of information that makes it into the Catabase, no schematics, photographs, bullet lists, numbers, qualitative experiences or terminology. This isn't important enough, in a sense. It wouldn't be important enough unless there was no one around to know it anymore. Between Homeland Security and organized crime, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings seem like they could be that time. So he's writing.
Eileen Ruskin may help us because she needs to redeem herself more than anything. Brian should be the one to speak with her.
Flint Deckard helps us because he thinks he's worthless and therefore—
Scritch, scritch. Leah follows Flint. On multiple levels, apparently. Blood may not be the only thing that ever matters, but for some people it's the only thing that really works. This rhetoric is so intimately familiar to him that he finds the appropriate words without difficulty despite the mounting discomfort of doing so. Okay. Okay, so maybe appropriate isn't the right word to use. Appropriate. Why, if his mother knew. Abruptly, he finds himself unable to pen down another mark; he squashes his eyelids closed, and unfolds his legs; he bumps into the table, knocks the tray shelf and jarrs the legs, puts an extra bruise on his knee. He puts his feet on the floor.
It's cold.
There's something both strange and banal about committing these truths to paper, and it feels worse instead of deferential that they're going in, simplified, and without qualification.
—not trust Ivanov beyond the most obvious interpretation of the law. He's a two-faced jackass.
Heh. Not the only one, really. Filing Colette Demsky in under the FBI agent, Teo pauses to scratch the nook where the bridge of his nose meets his brow with the pen cap. Leans his head against it, until the dig of pointed plastic begins to pierce through the wadded fog of painkillers and actually hurts. Rico Velasquez is an address and a note about conscience and helicopters over blackmail, and then 'Fedor Rochinikev' refers briefly a different safety deposit box, a stack of Russian language papers therein, and a certain love of righteous fire. When he can't think of anything else, he tosses in a last note and then tosses writing implement aside. The papers go into a stack, folded into thirds, and he shunts it into an envelope with his thumb.
PS: You can kill each other after you get Helena and Alexander home.
Sorry.
The bank opens in three hours, which adds up to enough sleep if you add in the fractioned series of uneasy naps he'd stolen underneath Sonny's arm earlier and subtract the rest offset by adrenaline and personal disinclination. He seals the envelope and yanks the light shut, lumbers back to the bed across the floor with his cellphone bleeping its alarm on. By now, his feet are cold enough that he doesn't notice that the floor is, too. Crawling onto the mattress, he levers a gap under the other man's body with his elbow, and squeezes in, is rewarded with an indistinct mumble of greeting.
He spends two or three minutes trying haplessly to psychically urge time forward, imagining that the sky is growing gray lines of Venetian-chopped sunlight across the ceiling, and then he closes his eyes. Sometimes, when he was younger and about to go into a big riot at a huge game, he could pick a feeling. Something pleasant, nervously jittery and too-excited, about Michele, or something remarkable Rommy accomplished, or the feel of zia Lucrezia's pride, and decide he'd be okay with that. With having only that, and dying tomorrow. He can't do that now. He's older. Those people are fucking gone. The one that remains is breathing a railroad cadence into his ear and onto neck and that, too, seems likely to fade. He stifles a yawn, which makes his jaw ache. Maybe tomorrow—
 March 10th: Apology is Not an Option |
 March 10th: Cracked |